The nation's employers added 271,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate ticked down slightly to 5 percent in a solid report on labor market conditions. Wages grew 2.5 percent over the past year, their strongest yearly performance since the recession officially ended in June 2009. Today's report portrayed a very different job market than that seen in the September release, when payrolls were up a by only (a revised) 137,000. As I stressed last month ("a weak report, but does it represent a true downshift?"), this sort of volatility is to be expected in "high-frequency" data and it is a strong reminder not to over-weight any one month's data when forming your views of the job market....
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